Thursday, June 30, 2011

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

This is in the Be A Pro mode, where instead of controlling all 11 players, I play as one guy for the entire 90 minutes. I'm #10 the striker who takes the first shot. You can see that I do a bit of a weave trying to create space before I get the ball. With the ball I usually try and go past the defender for a shot, but didn't have the angle. So I cut back, and took the shot.

Off the post. Hits the goalie's hand and bounces toward the goal again! Off the crossbar! And my teammate is there to steal the goal tap it in.

Right off the bat, let's ignore the Chargrilled. I've never had it, I'm sure it's fine. But come on.

The sandwiches are where it's at though. The spicy is good. If you're in the mood go for it. It pairs nicely with ranch. But here's the thing. They have so many good sauces: Chick-fil-A sauce, Honey Mustard, Barbecue, Buffalo, Polynesian, Ranch and Honey Roasted BBQ. So if you get the Spicy, it really only works with Ranch. I say, get the original sandwich, and you can have each bite in a different sauce--including the buffalo, which replicates the spicy breading.

You don't need the Deluxe version. Lettuce and tomato just get in the way and the cheese seems unnecessary.

So now we've got a sandwich in our order. What to add to it?

You could go for the classic waffle fries. They're tasty. But truth be told, they're not my favorite. I prefer more chicken.

I've experimented by adding some nuggets or strips to complete my order. And they're good. Sure, no complaints. But you know what? Somehow, they're still not as good as the sandwich. And it's not as if they're any cheaper.

So what's my perfect order?

2 Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

Probably one and a half is all you really need to eat. Which means that you've got half a sandwich to share with a five-year-old, a dog, or a homeless person. Or just take it home and eat it later.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Thursday, June 23, 2011

This week Chuck Klosterman interviewed Al Yankovic for the B.S. Report. In the 33-minute interview, Chuck fires one question after another, most of them very pointed about specific events in Al's life. These include a telegram saying that Al should not make eye contact with Prince, Eminem denying him from making a parody video for "Lose Yourself," the story of how Al performed hours after hearing of his parents dying from carbon monoxide poisoning and how he started a club called "Volcano Worshippers" in high school.

At one point Chuck cites "a story I read" and "in doing research for this interview" as to how he knows all of this personal information. That's almost true. The story that Chuck stumbled upon was Weird Al's wiki page. Literally, everything that Klosterman brought up is on here.

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That is not debatable. Those are facts. To this point, I have not made any evaluations of Chuck's research.

Clearly, Wikipedia is the first step for any doing research on anything. It is unbiased and thorough yet concise.

Simply put, it allows anyone to get the complete story on a subject in 5-10 minutes. The Weird Al article is 8500 words, the length of a short story. Reading the whole article might take you twelve minutes, but you could skim it in four.

Wikipedia doesn't tell you every factoid ever recorded, but it certainly provides more than enough information for someone completely unfamiliar to record a 30-minute interview.

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I'm not surprised that Chuck did all of his research on Wikipedia. It would be the first place I would go. And upon reading 8000+ words on Weird Al, I'd find it sufficient as well.

But what I find interesting is that Chuck never mentions Wikipedia. He says "a story that he read." And I know why. Doing your research on Wikipedia has a connotation. That it's the easy way out. Reading a story suggests a deeper involvement.

But in 2011, should we feel shame or guilt if we only use Wikipedia? I don't see the point. It's not the same as reading the Cliffs Notes instead of reading the book. It's got all the information you need, clearly presented.

Sports Illustrated had a good idea: "Imagine you and nine rival general managers are putting together basketball teams from scratch. Every current or former NBA or ABA player is available to draft, each in the prime of his career."

They even built a logo for it, perfectly reminiscent of 1993.

But not only did they draft the teams, they had Strat-O-Matic simulate the teams performance over an 82-game season. My observations:

Since the player pool is infinitely deep, they really should have done a man's league: 16, 20, or even 30 teams would have been better. This would have really put a focus on who did the best drafting. As it stands, I suppose, it's more focused on the players--that is, who are the top 50 franchise players to build around. After 50, you end up getting Paul Pierce and Manu Ginobili, in other words, meh.

Now as to the player selection. Everyone is going to have a team of good players. Which actually informs the selection process. You don't just need players who play well. You need players that play well against the best players.

For example, to pick someone at random, Charles Barkley is a great player. Can dominate most of his contemporaries. But how will he be facing off against the best of the best? In this draft, you need players that proved they could win championships, but specifically against other elite players/teams. Magic and Bird, I think both proved this against each other. Russell with his eleven championships during Wilt's era.

Also, because every player in the draft is excellent, my theory is that it is truly the elite of the elite that matter the most. The question is the elite of the elite cutoff at the top 10, 20, 30 or 40?

Let's start with a case study of the winner: Posnaski.

He drafted #2 Wilt, #19 Dr. J, #22 Isiah, #39 Havlicek, #42 Dirk.

I think Dirk is a quality pick, but after looking at the box scores, he played about 20-25 minutes a game--not a key full-time starter. While Posnaski's picks 2-4 are solid, it seems the differentiator here really was Wilt.

Next up, the second place team: Ballard.

#3 Russell, #18 LeBron, #23 Barkley, #38 Miller, #43 Rodman.

I'm a big Reggie Miller fan, but he's really a 3-point shooter, which there are plenty of other good ones available. It's his top 3 picks that really stand out, and personally, I think that Russell and LeBron are what made his team so successful. Because, and this is key, there aren't other players like them. For Russell, it's just Wilt. For LeBron on paper, you can say Kobe and MJ.

Now let's look at the worst two teams. First: McCallum.

#5 Oscar, #16 Elgin, #25 Pippen.

I can just stop here. I may not really know about the legendary play of Oscar and Elgin, but...
You might pick Oscar by saying that at his position, he's an elite talent. But this draft has proved that's not good enough. It's about finding the few players in the entire history that separate from everyone else, position excluded. In other words, it's easier to find players with Oscar's skills later in the draft, than it is to find one with Wilt's or Russel's.

Let's look at the second worst team: Mannix.

#9 Kobe, #12 Stockton.

That's enough. If you look at the top two drafted teams, they were able to get a great guard-like scorer with their second pick (Dr. J and LeBron). [Two things here: At least on paper in a vacuum, I think LeBron's better than Kobe. Bryant may have the rings, but he also had Phil Jackson and Shaq in his prime. Also, I know LeBron's a small forward, but I use guard-like to differentiate him from the big men.] Stockton is a great passer, but you can get that kind of value later on. It seems like Kobe could have been a second-rounder, Stockton a fourth-rounder, and it makes sense that teams that got a Wilt or Russell in the first round had a clear advantage over a team like this.

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So if we just take a look at the first round picks, in order of finishes:

When you look at this way, it seems clear that there was an advantage to picking early. That the biggest factor was getting a #1 player that you couldn't get anywhere else. As you might imagine, this favors the elite big men, as they are the hardest to come by. That Jordan can make such a big difference as a two-guard is a testament to how good he really is.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

My second barbecue experience in Denver was at Yazoo. It was convenient to go to this newer location near my hotel, not their original location.

First sign that something's not quite right...their house specialty is a Bob...a chicken dish.

Now I saw a bunch of people ordering it. It looked good. Chicken with jalapenos and bacon on skewers. But it's chicken. Barbecue places all over the country feature pork, brisket, ribs as their signature dish...but chicken?

Anyways, I got the 1/2 pound pork sandwich with beans.

The pork was dry and not that flavorful. Luckily, they had an assortment of good sauces, so it was an enjoyable sandwich.

But as far as barbecue goes, I wasn't impressed. Maybe I'll have to try the Bob, sometime when I'm in the mood for chicken, just not barbecue.

Easily the best part of the trip from O'Fallon, Illinois to Denver, Colorado is the barbecue pit stop in Kansas City. (pun intended)

The day was June 4, 2011. I had my choice of any place I wanted to go. The answer was Gates.

Previous visits had taken us to the Gates in Overland Park based on where the cheap hotels are. This time, on I-70 West, we pulled into a Gates on State in Kansas City, Kansas.

I would have liked to get a combo plate, to taste multiple meats, but the only variety plate they had was $17 and I assumed enough for two people.

So I ordered what I loved last time: Burnt End on Bun with fries.

Here's what Gates' burnt ends look like:

This was the sandwich that just 8 months ago I rated A++.

This time...I wasn't as impressed. Which surprised me.

Perhaps it was the high expectations. Perhaps it was the different location. (Though the sandwich looked the same. I thought the fries were as good as always.)

But the meat didn't wow me. Again, I think this was largely my own expectations vs reality.

In the two weeks since, I've reflected how the first time I got pork burnt ends at Jack Stack (October 07) was way better than the second time (February 09). So maybe the lesson is to always try something new.

Regardless, I enjoyed the food. It's good quality. A real nice dinner. Just not world-class.

Burnt End on Bun: A-
Fries: AOverall: A-

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Coming back on June 10, I wanted to try a new place. We pulled into the Zarda BBQ in Blue Springs, on the Missouri side of Kansas City.

Again, I looked for a way to order multiple meats but settled for a burnt end sandwich. Here's what Zarda serves up:

The sandwich comes on a smaller, circular bun here. And the meat comes in solid chunks, not shredded like at Gates and Arthur Bryant's. They had a good variety of sauces which you can see sampled on the left side of my plate.

Suprisingly, my reaction was similar to my Gates review. Good, nothing special. The sides were good. But the meat wasn't blowing me away. The texture wasn't my favorite. I've had big chunks of burnt ends before. Jack Stack serves up this style, but the meat is tender and you could shred it with your fingers if you wanted to. At Zarda, the texture was more solid.

This place was good enough that I'd try it again one day, but I wouldn't order the burnt ends.